Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Two Men Enter by Steve Ormosi

Enter the barfighters, two individuals of excessive BACs and highly diminished reasoning. Personally, I've never been in a bar fight, so I suppose it holds an air of mystique for me. Seemingly, it's just a base, instinctual drive to avenge that leads people into bar fights or any fights, really. What the combatants are avenging (or sometimes defending) is often whispy and quixotic, but the ability to let go of reason/decency/propriety and flip the fuck out is appealing to me (mainly because I can't figure out how to do it). Yes, you'll never be looked upon as an upright citizen for being in a fight, but you also get to find out how much punishment you can take and how much you can really dish out. Fights are raw. Fights let us see the bare bones of the human condition with no restraints. But fights also look really painful, which is another reason I avoid them.

The man in the orange sweater cussed loudly as he stumbled
from his stool. He pulled up short just
in front of my face and eyed me.

“The fook d’ya think yur looking at, laddie?” He asked.

“Garfield, I think.” I said, my slight buzz emboldening me a
little, “The cartoon cat, not the former American president.”

Garfield turned around, found that he had no audience, thought for a moment and then decided to proclaim to his empty mug,
“Funny kid ai’nee?”

The bartender, a young lady, looked at us nervously. I wanted to assure her that it was going to
be fine, but I knew it wouldn’t and I didn’t want to give her false hope just
before I provoked the lunatic, so I simply smiled at her. It did nothing to relax her visible concern.

The man turned back to me, leering, “Been lookin’ fer
someone like you aaalllll night.”

Spittle hung from his lips as he spoke and he looked like he
could topple over at any moment, but he eyed me intensely enough that I thought
for a moment perhaps this was not what I had been hoping for after all. I drove the thought from my mind and
sharpened my own gaze.

“That’s good to hear,” I said, “Because I’ve been looking
for someone like you, too. See, I’ve
always been kind of a pussy and getting into a barfi…” He knocked me to my ass, and I hadn’t even
gotten halfway through my speech. My
face immediately burned hot, but flexing my jaw, I knew he hadn’t broken it. He stood over me laughing, his stupid orange
sweater mocking me like a grinning Jack O’lantern.

I wiped my mouth and stood, a little shakily at first but I
found my stance and put my fists up. I
threw a clumsy hand at him and he sidestepped it. A punch to my stomach left me on my
knees. The breath flew out of me. As I gasped impotently, he put his foot into
my ribs. I fell over and laid there, a
tear rolled off my cheek as I shuddered.
He backed up again.

“All done, laddie?”

My eyes went up, and I looked around. The few people who were in the bar stood in a
circle around us, grinning madly. The
bartender was on the phone, presumably with the police. She looked worried and I realized my time was
running out. I dove at the man, catching
him off guard. A hush fell over the
crowd. A hush, I thought, I did
that. I felt a hand in my face but it
drunkenly slid off of me. My
semi-sobriety was finally beginning to pay dividends. I reached back and slammed a fist down into
his face. It hurt like hell, but I
didn’t care. I reached back and smashed
him again. Blood started flowing from
his nose as he shoved me off of him and sat up.
It dribbled down his shirt mingling with the orange and dripping onto
the floor. He coughed up a large gob of
the stuff onto his pants, painting his crotch red. He tried to stand but fell over, stunned.

I wasted no time jumping on him and raining more fists into
his face until I felt a hand grab my arm and heard some faraway voice say,
“He’s had enough.”

I briefly struggled, but more arms grabbed me and flung me
backwards and I relented. I sat on the
ground, head propped against a barstool.
I felt the adrenaline ebb from me and I looked at the man in the orange
sweater. He wasn’t moving. The bartender stood at the back of the crowd
crying. I wiped my hand across my mouth
and saw that I was bleeding, myself. The
bar was completely quiet. I smiled. I did it.
It was a glorious moment.

And a moment’s all it lasted.

The first officer, a bear of a man, walked through the door
and surveyed the scene. He looked to the
bartender who was crying now, shaking. She had been the first one pulling me back, I realized.

“What happened?” he asked.

She pointed at me, “He…did…that.” And she pointed at the man
in the orange sweater still not moving, bleeding onto the ground.

Another officer, smaller, but stocky, walked in as the first
knelt next to the man in the orange sweater.
He pulled his shoulder radio up and called for an ambulance. The larger cop tried to revive the man I’d
recently been pummeling while the shorter one walked over to me and squatted.

“You do this, kid?
He ain’t looking too good over there.”

I nodded weakly. My
face revealed that I wasn’t the only one to land a couple of punches, at least.

“He started it,” I said.

“Well it’s not like we can ask him right now. C’mon, get up. We gotta take you in.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me up. Then he pulled my arms behind me and cuffed
them together. This wasn’t how it was
supposed to go. But sometimes…even the
best laid plans.

I found out later that the man in the orange sweater died in
the hospital from his injuries. My first
and only bar fight, and I’d killed a man.
The judge banged the gavel and I was a volunteer manslaughterer. What a world.

As they led me from the courtroom that day, on the advice of
a friend, I held my head up. Now was not
the time to show weakness. My real test
was still ahead.